


Paracusia

by Grand_Phoenix



Series: Warcraft Drabbles, Short Stories, and Other Such Things [40]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dark, Everything Hurts, Fridge Horror, Headcanon, Horror, Male Friendship, Nightmares, No Romance, Psychological Horror, but not a happy one, this story plays on the idea that Il'gynoth was talking about the Sunwell in Legion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24557113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grand_Phoenix/pseuds/Grand_Phoenix
Summary: It was only a dream. You're okay. [Lor'themar, Alleria, and Rommath, between the Isle of Quel'Danas and Silvermoon City][BfA era, post-Warchief of the Horde][Based off headcanon that might be jossed in the future]
Relationships: Rommath & Lor'themar Theron
Series: Warcraft Drabbles, Short Stories, and Other Such Things [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/971712
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Paracusia

**Author's Note:**

> So this started off as a very brief, very abrupt what-if drabble that would look at what would happen if Alleria actually attempts to reclaim Silvermoon by force (as she so tells Lor'themar during the Nightborne recruitment quest) but somewhere along the way falls off the wagon and taps into the Void, resulting in the Sunwell to go belly-up and open the gateway for a Void Lord to use.
> 
> Naturally, that would cause the end of Azeroth and begin the process of entropy (and maybe the Big Crunch, but this would have to take into account the possibility that the Light would reform and start another Big Bang with the Void Lords if they don't off in a Big Freeze scenario). It would have been the end of the story, too, but this changed over time to become a nightmare Lor'themar has and worries over, despite canon dictating that some of his biggest problems stem from Kael'thas's betrayal in _A Moment in Verse_. 
> 
> I kind of wish I had been more in my element when I wrote this, especially since the "Falion Meets Dwemer" inspirations came so late during the story's development. Although if it really wanted to pay homage (and be more horrific), it'd have to include the non-con psychosexual metaphors. Maybe in another story, depending on what becomes of the Lor'themar/Thalyssra ship post-BfA (because I guess Lor'themar/Liadrin isn't a thing anymore...?).

“You did it,” Lor’themar chokes out, gags, and coughs up another fresh glob of blood—all over the ground and his mouth, staining his undone beard. Scorched, dirty, and flecked with gore from slaughtered ren’dorei, it’s a sticky, hot feeling that doesn’t cancel the drumbeat misery of what remains of the left side of his face, making the world a little bit darker, claustrophobic. “You won. _Congratulations_.”

All the color in Alleria’s complexion is gone, as is the Voidforged mantle she wore when the Alliance stormed up the Ghostlands and turned the Dead Scar into a path of glorious Light-blasted glass that incinerated the walking dead and mummified fallen soldiers – Horde and Alliance alike, dead and alive – into statues of eternal, frozen wakefulness. Tranquilien burned, the Runestones shattered, and they emerged into Eversong Woods, blazing bright with justice and vengeance in equal fervor. Fairbreeze Village crumbled, the Sanctums ignited, and the Farstrider Retreat – where a slew of young blood elves and nightborne were being trained and supervised by Halduron - was purged. Sometime during the assault, the Sunsail Anchorage was overwhelmed by the _Vindicaar_ , newly repaired and offloading scores of warmachines, gats bristling and runic wings searing patterns in the sky. The smoke was still thick on the horizon, when Alleria had finally appeared over the hill and spearheaded the charge.

She had been fierce. She had been rage incarnate. She had reminded him the time was come to take back what was hers, while Vereesa, golden-eyed and branded in sputtering Lightforged scars that glowed like embers, declared that justice would be met, and that the sin’dorei should seek redemption and repent for the crimes they committed in the name of the Horde. Umbric marched behind them, threescore Void-touched elves at his flanks, extending their magic to the corpses littering the streets to set them on their feet and back upon their enemies. The air was rife with a melody, akin to wind chimes blowing from afar in an underground tunnel.

They’re gone now, consumed by the shadows that erupted out of the Sunwell. Umbric was the first to go, didn’t move fast enough to make a sound. Vereesa went next, and she laughed and laughed until tears fell, and they didn’t stop falling and she didn’t stop laughing until the half-formed arm grabbed her, pulled her in, and put an end to her misery forever. That was when they ran, and one by one the ren’dorei became one, and only Lor’themar and Alleria managed to just barely direct the translocator to the Court of the Sun.

The melody remains, loud and shrill. Clanging, clanging, clanging, among the screams and the wind. His ears pop, his temples smashing together.

“I,” Alleria stammers. Her jaw flaps up and down like a fish gasping on dry land. “It...It wasn’t my intention. I just—I didn’t—”

“It’s all _yours_ , Windrunner,” Lor’themar says. Licks his lips, takes a breath, and spits blood at her feet. “ _Enjoy_.”

Then the hand comes up, long-fingered and sunset-purple, over the wall, and closes over golden-coned spires and wingspread phoenixes that will never reach the twilight sky again. A second hand rises from the opposite end and swipes the parapets clean of armaments and bronzed figureheads standing to attention, their watch ending. The arch collapses inward, the bridge shatters.

The ground trembles.

Lor’themar falls onto his side and doesn’t react when his head cracks against the pavement. Dizzy, panting, he watches particles of stone and silk and sediment slip between his fingers like sand and drift up, up, into the air. His clothes lighten, his skin tingling with a yearning for freedom. He can almost, almost, feel his blood and bones pushing for release, each shove harder than the last.

With a subterranean moan, the voidcaller rears up to its full height. Dark, metallic wings unfurl, its feather dying stars, its allegiance sigils inscribed in white-hot fire as old and cruel as the clash between Light and Shadow that started it all. It is the only light they have, flickering an epileptic frenzy in a world that’s submerged into deepest night.

It stares at them, flames winking from beneath its massive, leathery hood.

Torn between sacrificing the last fetters shackling his mortal coil to the Void and the pain in his eye socket that dulls with each slowing heartbeat, Lor’themar hears Alleria take one step back, then two. There’s a sound coming out of her, caught between a sob and a scream. “Arator,” she gasps, shaking her head back and forth. Then, in a thin, shrill voice, “ _Arator…!_ ”

Arator isn’t with her.

Arator, for whatever reason, never joined her in the crusade.

He knew why.

_Doesn’t matter anymore,_ Lor’themar thinks, closing his eye and bracing himself. _We’ll all be joining you._

The wind chimes are louder in his head. Not deafening as they were before; these are quieter, softer. There are countless voices clamoring to be heard all at once, to fit in his head all at once; yet at the same time they sing in perfect harmony, slow and aching like a lullaby. It reminds him of his mother, in ages past, who would let him lay his head upon her lap and run her fingers through his scalp, easing him into a dream on the edges of reality in a low lilt. She would weave the tale of how Dath’remar Sunstrider and the Highborne men and women that followed him across the sea and settled north in the forest that would become their home, first raising Silvermoon City stone by stone until it seemed their towers could touch the heavens, and then building the walls that would safely enclose the Sunwell on the Isle of Quel’Danas, where the air tingled with magic and each breath taken was as fulfilling as a warm meal – through the wind, the rain, the snow, and those long, lonely, quiet nights when the White Lady and Blue Child were away, off on adventures to places only they knew of, with but the chirrups of roosting dragonhawks for company.

_Sleep,_ she tells him. _Dream._

The hand that comes down on him.

* * *

It's hard as it is sudden, smashing him flat into the pavement with the snap of bones and the squelch of innards, the air in his lungs sucker punched out of him that fills him with ice.

The air is hot when he shoots up in bed, mouth open in an aborted scream.

The room is dark, save for the faint glow of the firefly lamps on the walls and a thin slant of moonlight filtering through the curtained windows. His nightshirt is damp and sticks to his body. His heartbeat thumps painfully. His breath rasps in his throat. He flicks his gaze from one corner of the room to the other.

Nothing stirs.

He gets out of bed, pulls the dagger he keeps tucked underneath his pillow, and leaves the room on silent, bare feet, a shock of cold to his soles that should’ve bothered him.

Not tonight. The end of the war doesn’t mean the end of hostilities. The bulk of Alliance forces overseas had been stationed at either pushing the Horde out of the Arathi Highlands or sabotaging the Zandalari’s naval armaments in Zuldazar. It was only when Tyrande, aided by her newfound Army of the Black Moon and a contingent of worgen granted to her by Greymane, cleansed Darkshore of the Forsaken presence did the numbers start to dwindle—first at Dazar’alor, then in Nazjatar, and finally by N’Zoth. But by luck or by the grace of the Sunwell the Thalassian Pass was spared the worst of the siege breaking attacks, and what few spies that managed to infiltrate the defenses were caught by farstriders and dealt with.

But the ren’dorei were only recently removed from Quel’Thalas and the beauty of the Light—they _knew_ the lay of the land and, for some, the inner workings of sin’dorei politics and military might. Yet above all else their love for their nation remained and their hatred for the Warchief and the treatment they were given for following Alleria into learning the forbidden research—the kind of research, they claimed, the blood elves had no problem picking up from Kael’thas and the Scryers—lingered like a wound that will never fully heal. It stings, knowing they could never go back to their motherland, their families because of their misguided foolishness.

It _stings_ , knowing what he knows now. To choose between banishing them for the safety of the sin’dorei and the Sunwell that would sacrifice their numbers to pad the Alliance’s dwindling forces and state secrets for them to engineer and exploit, or renege on the laws put into place outlawing dangerous magicks and strongarm them into his service the same way Sylvanas drafted the tauren to the frontlines and forced all the Horde to repeat the same atrocities Garrosh committed on a scale that made him look like a Light-blessed saint….

_The king sent them,_ the voice in his head growls at him. Then, _The Windrunners. Nothing but trouble, the lot of them. Insane in the membrane. They’ve dared to take everything from you, ever since man learned magic._ But Anduin is not Varian, and for all their madness at bucking family tradition and a lifetime of happiness and purity to be had in a sundered world, the Windrunners would never pull a stunt like this just after the armistice was signed.

He slides the dagger from its sheath, careful not to draw sound off the leather or catch the light of the moon. His feet carry him to the end of the hall, where it opens up to the central chamber of Sunfury Spire.

Full dark, so few stars.

Nothing stirs.

_They know,_ it whispers. _They know what you denied yourself in all that vainglorious righteousness. You turned them away when the Sunwell dared to grow dark. They turn against you now, a weapon for lesser evils._

He blinks.

_You could’ve stopped this. You could’ve stopped_ her _._

_Now they can be anywhere._

He licks his lips, exhales, presses them together.

_What will you do?_

_Where will you go?_

Lor’themar’s grip tightens on the blade. His eyes flick from one corridor to the other, all plunging into darkness.

He licks his lips.

_Find them!_ _Get rid of them!_

“Lor’themar?”

He jumps, turns in the direction of the voice, and winces when the elf snatches him by the wrist and twists his arm to the side. The dagger drops, clattering to the floor. He hisses, doubling over, claps his free hand over the man’s and tugs for him to let go. He doesn’t.

Panting, Lor’themar opens his eyes, and blinks. “R-Rommath…? What are you—”

“Doing out here, in the middle of the night? Pardon my Common, Lor, but _I_ should be the one asking _you_ what the fel you’re doing. As for what I’m up to, I’m going to my suite and getting some much needed rest. I just finished signing off the paperwork allowing our magisters to return to the city to train recruits in a less _barbaric_ environment, seeing as Liadrin and her knights are preoccupied in Orgrimmar. I figured Id let you know...later in the morning.”

Lor’themar wants to laugh; no one outside the blood elves would believe Rommath is anything but barbaric when, as his mages would tell them, that Rommath wields barbarism with a more dignified flair as befitting his noble upbringing. He issues a sound that rises up his throat in a laugh and leaves his lips in a small, pitiful croak. “ _Haaa-oh_. Is...Is that so?”

Rommath frowns, from his brow to his mouth. “What are you doing with a dagger, anyway, scared out of your wits?”

“You...You don’t know?” Lor’themar asks, straightening up. Rommath doesn’t release him.

“Know what?”

“The ren’dorei!” he gasps. “They’re here, Rommath! They’ve come to take the Sunwell!”

“Lor’themar,” Rommath says, gentle yet firm, “we have security stationed all over Quel’Danas around the clock, twenty-four hours, seven days a week. If Alleria or any of her band even so much as crosses the Thalassian Pass the telemancers will alert us in an instant. Besides, you saw what happened when we had her here. What good is a, oh I don’t know, let’s call it a _Voidwell_ , going to do for her? They’re damned enough as it is to begin with.”

“But...I saw them. I saw what happened." Lor'themar's breath quickens. "In my dream, they marched with the Alliance and ripped through the Ghostlands. Turned the Dead Scar into pure glass. And they kept going, Rom. They burned down all of Eversong, they crystallized the strait to get to Quel’Danas and—!”

“Lor’themar!” Rommath cries. He reaches out, grabs the Regent Lord’s other hand by the wrist, and yanks them down between them in a vice that Lor’themar can’t break from even if he tried. His gaze is intense, his frown severe; they’re strong enough to put a lesser elf into the ground with utter fear. Lor’themar only stares, filled with a wild, wide-eyed dumbfoundment.

Rommath’s nostrils flare, and, even though it doesn’t relinquish, the strength in his hold loosens slightly. “It was only a dream,” he says, quiet. “There are no void elves in Quel’Thalas. Not in Silvermoon, not in Quel’Danas. The Void holds no power over the Light here. The Sunwell is safe. _We’re_ safe. You’re okay, Lor’themar.”

“I...I’m okay,” Lor’themar repeats, and takes the time to breathe and slow his frantic heartrate. “I’m okay.”

“It was just a dream.”

“Just a dream. Oh, but Light…it felt so real…as if I were right there….”

“You’re here with me, Lor. Feel my pulse." He moves the man's fingers over it. "Can you feel it? It’s beating. This is real.”

“I heard my mother sing, Rom…I’d forgotten what it sounded….”

“I can’t say I knew her very well, but I do remember her voice. It was sweet. Calming.”

“It was the only warmth I had in the whole world,” Lor’themar croaks, and gnaws on the inside of his lower lip. “I was so cold, Rom.”

“Shh. No more, Lor.” Rommath’s fingers rub slow circles over the Regent Lord’s knuckles. “Put it behind you. You’re with me now.”

“I’m sorry. I…I shouldn't have—”

“No, no, don’t be. You’re okay. You’re okay. Come on. Let’s go to bed. It’s late. You don’t want to mess up your sleep schedule any more than it is, do you?”

“I don’t see what good that’ll do. Something else will threaten our existence again in another few months. What does it matter?”

“As long as it’s not the Alliance or one of us going rogue itching for a third round of warmongering, I think we'll be fine. We have to recoup our losses, boost the economy, pay our dues for our silence in complicity. But not tonight. Let us put it out of our minds.” Rommath releases one of Lor’themar’s wrists and bends down, scooping up the dagger. “I’ll hold onto this for you. Give it back in the morning.”

“That’s fine,” Lor’themar mumbles. He doesn’t protest nor tries to move to take it from him.

Rommath nods and, still holding Lor’themar’s hand, guides them down the hallway the Regent Lord had come. Wending through the darkness interspersed with slants of meager starlight. Lor’themar keeps pace behind him even though they’re going slow, making the time for him to relax and return to a better frame of mind. He stares at the way Rommath’s fingers are closed around his, notes how long and slender they are. Fitting, for a mage. Lor'themar's are thicker and callused. Old, white scars slash across their lengths. The tip of his middle finger is missing, cut off by Zul’jin in the midst of the madness that precluded Dar’Khan’s timely intervention and escape from Zul’Aman. A sense of unreality and vertigo washes over him at the thought.

Lor’themar stays silent the rest of the way, until Rommath stops them in front of the curtained threshold leading into his suite. He moves the silk to one side and watches as Lor’themar trudges past him, coming to a stop in the middle of the room. The sheets are almost thrown off the bed, his pillow vertical up against the wall from where he pulled the dagger out from underneath.

He stares at it, shifts from one foot to the other.

“Go on, Lor,” Rommath says. “Sleep. Today is a new day.”

“I know,” Lor’themar replies, more to himself than to the magister.

“It won’t do you any good overthinking it. Remember, the day after tomorrow you’re going to Suramar and take a tour with Thalyssra around the city. Do you really want her to see you looking like you got dragged through hell and back on your first date in who knows how long?”

“It’s not a date,” he says, and doesn’t care if the pout in his voice can be heard.

Rommath sighs. “Well, either way, however you want to put it, the last thing you want to do is make her worry. You need to be in good health when you get on that boat and step foot onto the docks, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

“I already told you, I’m going.”

“Then that settles it! Keep that in mind and you’ll forget about that awful dream for sure.”

Lor’themar nods. “Yes...Yes, you’re right. I’ll forget about it. I’ll...I’ll be fine.” He shuffles around until he’s partway facing Rommath. “Good night, Rommath.”

“Good night, Lor’themar.”

Rommath leaves, ponytail bouncing behind him as he vanishes across the threshold. _Tap, tap, tap_ —hard sounds for hard shoes, all the more to let everyone know who’s coming and ready to announce his presence for them to hear and obey. Not so quiet as Lor’themar’s, if he were wearing anything. It’s not until he’s certain the Grand Magister’s all but truly gone that he notices how cool the floor feels beneath his soles.

He wiggles his toes, issuing for a scrap of warmth. His upper body shivers; half the buttons are undone. He can see the faint edges of the hole Zul’jin tried to put into his stomach. It etches a starburst pattern round his side and across part of his abdomen instead.

Lor’themar lifts his head and looks at the bed. The moonlight is gone. The fireflies are dim.

He sighs, and gives his cheek a lazy scratch. “Come on,” he tells himself, and drags his feet toward the bed. Bends over, picks the sheets off the floor, fusses with them and sets them straight. “Come on,” he says again, fluffing the pillow and adjusting it so it’s settled up against the headboard. Then he gets under the sheets, pulls them up to his neck, and stares at the ceiling.

Full dark, no stars.

The dragonhawks do not sing. The lynxes do not yowl, for dominance and for copulation. The machines in Farstriders’ Square are powered down, not a hum of electrical output and arcane energy in the background to help ease one into the realm of dreams. No wind sweeping in from the streets to carry its chill and force him to seek further warmth and comfort in refuge.

Nothing stirs.

_You’re okay,_ he thinks, studying the niches and the corners, the ceiling and the floor. The threshold and the sequins stitched into the silk partitions. _You’re okay._ Not a single void elf hides in the shadows. No sign of Alleria lying in the wait or Vereesa rambling for redemption and patches hiding her scars. No sign of the leather-bound god emerging from the Sunwell, blotting out the White Lady and her Child and all the stars shrouded in obscurity, barely able to contain its hunger.

_You’re okay._

His eyes burn. He fights to keep them open.

_I’m okay._

_I’m okay._

_I’m okay._

_I’m okay…._

* * *

Just outside the range of hearing, soft and sweet, the Sunwell sings a song of windchimes.

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of backstory in the nightmare sequence had to be cut due to it being exposition dumping I felt was improper in a serious scene. It was but a short paragraph (that was actually a massive run-on sentence) describing Vereesa's descent into zealotry and insanity that occurred from a lightforged ritual that she either failed or botched somewhere along the line, to which Rommath - in a flashback - would point out the scars to Lor'themar. There were also mentions of Arator alerting Lor’themar and the Council of the Sun of the impending Alliance-Ren’dorei assault led by Alleria on Silvermoon ahead of time, which gave the Horde opportunity to shore up defenses that, unfortunately, collapse under the weight of the opposition. Because of his absence, Lor’themar, despite his feelings toward half-elves, arrives at the conclusion that Arator was possibly caught and murdered by Vereesa shortly after her ritual. Lastly, there would be a quick aside taking note that Sylvanas wasn’t at Silvermoon (presumably being the whole reason Alleria decides to invade Eversong Woods in the first place), with the implication she abandons the city, the blood elves, and the nightborne training there to their fate.
> 
> Dialogue was also cut from the following scene when Lor'themar wakens, to which his thoughts tell him that the Windrunners sent the void elves after him at Anduin's - or rather, Stormwind's - whim, that they _"They bend the knee to human men and so much more."_ Although it's not outright, this statement was intended to all but imply that the Windrunner sisters are performing sexual acts on human men in power to spite elven men that are denied the opportunity of receiving and giving that pleasure to the most sought after women in Quel'Thalas. It's mainly a reference to people that have a massive chip on their shoulder over female elves choosing human men over male elves in relationships when it's...just the Windrunners choosing them as their love interests (or, in Sylvanas's case, someone she cares deeply for, which might be one of the reasons why Lor'themar can't stand Nathanos). However, given how _extremely volatile_ the topic is, as well as how very defensive some blood elf fans get when it's brought up ("They're taking _our_ women from us!") and how uncomfortable _I get_ when I see the vitriol aimed at Vereesa's twins when it happens (AFAIK half-elf resentment only exists in the non-canon RPG, I haven't seen any indication this was carried over to retail beyond Elisande deriding the high elves in _Legion_ ), I opted to remove it if only to avoid the negative connotations that come with it. It was, in the end, really out of place. I think that's a subject that should be brought up in a separate story.


End file.
